iphone

Just the other day my internship mentor, Colin Alsheimer of LevelTen Interactive, showed me a new app on his iPhone called Layar. Basically what I had to do was move his iPhone around the office and what I found blew my mind. The screen showed images of people Tweeting nearby in real time!

About a month ago, I officially joined the ranks of iPhone users. Since then, I've been introduced to an entire new world of mobile phone apps, and on-the-go social networking. One of my favorite discoveries - and one of the major reasons why I purchased my iPhone in the first place is the abundance of location based iPhone apps. These applications help me find new restaurants, bars and other nightlife spots wherever I go, and they help me say in touch or meet up with friends in the area.

Recently, one of our clients asked us to design a website layout specifically for the iPhone. LevelTen has created one iPhone specific web application in our past, but we have little experience with best practices. This prompted me to research some iPhone web applications and find out what makes a good web app vs. a bad web app. These are my findings:

(The web apps I list below can be viewed on an iPhone, if you have one, but may also be viewed on this iPhone emulator on the web.)

1. Simplicity is Key

Over at Bitt Box.com a blog was posted today alerting designers to the growing importance to tailor web design to the increasing number of iPhone and iTouch users.

For a while now, it has been rumored among news outlets, bloggers, and our very own Bryan Stoner, that Google would soon announce its very own equivalent to the iPhone, the gPhone. One blog article earlier this morning, even stated that Google would partner with Sprint for the carrier service just as Apple did with AT&T. Since I am a current Sprint customer, this was the highlight of my morning.

Mobile browsing has been an interest of mine ever since Blue Flavor released the dotMobi "Mobile Web Developer's Guide Part I," a best-practices guide for developing websites specifically for mobile devices.

No this is not a post related in any way to the fallen pop star's latest flagellation for attention, but all about how i want the iPhone! And I want to see beautiful websites on that crystal clear LCD.

Here's how: iPhone's Mobile Safari Compatibility Tips